Insults Done Well
By God, you supercilious streak of Irish puke! You four-eyed bog-ignorant, potato-eating ponce!
(In 1979 I interviewed French theater critic Guy Dumur for an article I was writing for the British magazine Plays and Players on the difficulties of translation. Monsieur Dumur had just seen staged his translation into French of Tom Stoppard’s play Travesties. Needless to say his translation of this insult thrown at James Joyce by the surrealist Trista Tzara in the play was no match for the poetry or intensity of Stoppard’s invective. If I recall, even Monsieur Dumur reluctantly agreed.)
